1. “Still Life with Iris” is a story about a young girl named Iris who lives in a place called Nocturno, where people have their memories stored in Past Coats and are under the rule of a couple called the Great Goods. The Great Goods want the best of everything so they take Iris away to their home on Great Island taking away her Past Coat leaving her with only one of the buttons off of it. Iris wants to leave Great Island and find the little girl who she believed the button belongs to, so with the help of her two friends Mozart and Annabelle Lee she attempts to escape. She is eventually reunited with her coat and remembers who she is, is reunited with her family, and returns to Nocturno.
2. The intended purpose of the play was to teach about the importance of remembering your past. Throughout the almost the entirety of the play we see examples of this, for example, Mister Matternot turns out at the end to be Iris’s father. However, by the time he is reunited with his coat he has spent several years away from his family because he couldn’t remember who he was, where he came from or his past. When he was reunited with his coat he remembers who he was, why his hands are cut, and who his family is and is finally able to return to Nocturno. Also, both the mom and later the daughter lose their Past Coats and once they do, they both behave nearly identically at first, not knowing who anyone else is, who they are, or what is going on. It demonstrates that without our memories we are